There are days I don’t need instructions for how to live, just proof that someone else has walked through the fire & kept their feet on the ground. You’ve given that here—not as sermon, but as scent. A life that doesn’t explain itself. A grief that didn’t ask to be softened. Presence, poured like morning light over dark grain.
What stayed with me wasn’t what was lost.
It was how you stayed. How you dipped again.
How you kept offering the cup even while shaking.
Thank you for letting this one breathe out into the world.
“the moment you notice that you are not experiencing any kind of ‘time’, time lands right there on top of you and you lose the flow, the presence. Divinely paradoxical huh?” Indeed, I practice fielding that moment of return, becoming as intimately aware of it as breath. It can be gently rolled away, sending it back, and returning us to presence. When you say it lands on top of you, I agree, it does! And that can be keenly felt in the body and so metabolised by it too. And now off to continue this guilty midnight pleasure…
Reading your piece felt like stepping into a dunnage warehouse at dawn: cool stone walls, silent as chapel, yet fragranced by decades of patient spirit-work. You have already pulled a bold dram of metaphor from the cask, but may I swirl one further nuance into the glass?
You speak beautifully of the Angel’s Share, the half that vanishes skyward, and of the richer half that “remains, stays more”. In the trade, cooperage folk also whisper about the Devil’s Cut: the whisky that never evaporates but sinks into the staves themselves, darkening oak from within. When a decommissioned barrel is broken open, that hidden portion is teased back out, sometimes becoming the smoky undertone of a future blend. I wonder if our grief has a similar afterlife. Part evaporates (angelic, vaporous, memorial), yet part seeps marrow-deep, tinting the very grain of us. We do not merely carry loss; loss carries us, diffused through every fibre, waiting to be coaxed into some later, unexpected sweetness.
Which leads to a possibility your essay gestures toward but does not quite name: the art of re-casking the self. Distillers often finish a mature whisky in an entirely different barrel,,Sauternes, rum, mizunara, preventing stagnation and inviting surprise. Could the next ceremonial act after “remaining” be “re-maturing”, situating the newly porous heart in unfamiliar cooperage, learning a language, courting absurdity, apprenticing to silliness, even falling bewilderingly in love with a moss-green idea? Re-casking does not erase the original character; it converses with it, layering pear atop peat.
Your daily rites (hand-ground coffee, Gaeilge blessings, funk dances among birch) already hint at this. Each practice is a stave from another forest, spliced into your barrel. They stretch grain, alter tannins, make space for notes no single wood could provide. Presence is the solvent; curiosity, the catalyst; time, the quiet heat that fuses flavour.
When I write that intimacy is “dangerously unarmed”, I forgot to mention that ageing spirit was literally flammable. A warehouse rick going up in flames is called a “whisky-fire” and firefighters will tell you it burns blue-gold. So yes, living with an “open and broken heart” means accepting that at any moment the soul might flambé, releasing both angel and devil in one blue gout of becoming. But what is left in the smouldering ash often nourishes the next forest of oaks.
May your future self, thirty seasons hence, tap the bung of today’s barrel and be startled by a glint of lyric amber neither of you could name in advance. Sláinte!
Astonishingly erudite response and even though I would not expect anyrhing less, this has elevated you to a whole other place in my pantheon of writing Gods and human beings. As a visitor to many a whisky vault in my time, your journey through the stave staining Devil's share and the re maturing metaphor light me up and speak a language I know in my bones. (For the record, a Port Cask is where all of my re maturing will occur).
It is soul incendiary liquid you pour here. I do believe I have been well and truly flambéd already madame!!
I am so deeply moved by this response this morning that there are tears. Delighted ones. You are without a doubt living into your nom de plume as one guided by the muse, not just as a writer but as a host and catalyst for others. That you would take time out to meet me here in my early stumblings and offer both praise and profound encouragement is truly humbling and so beautifully raw.
You have not just made my day but planted a seed of ash for a future forest. Incredible.
P.S. I really meant to ask you about using the quote from your essay and it all got lost in the frenzy of actually hitting publish. So, thank you for the remain seedling. xx
This is all so uncannily close to what I have been experiencing during the last year or two that I'm finding it hard to take in as I still don't quite understand my own experience yet. I am going to come back to this when I'm less overwhelmed because it is valuable and beautiful and probably the most normal thing I've ever read, if we may revert to the original meaning of normal and not the masking we all pretend is real.
Go raibh maith agat. I am sorry to hear you have had such trying circumstances but I am happy that this ‘normal’ piece found a place in you. Take your time and be with the overwhelm. I look forward to your return and your thoughts when you can do that. Go well. Sine é.
Reading this in the middle of the night and right now you’re making me want to get up and make my morning coffee—loving soaking this read in. Back in a while.
Paul—
There are days I don’t need instructions for how to live, just proof that someone else has walked through the fire & kept their feet on the ground. You’ve given that here—not as sermon, but as scent. A life that doesn’t explain itself. A grief that didn’t ask to be softened. Presence, poured like morning light over dark grain.
What stayed with me wasn’t what was lost.
It was how you stayed. How you dipped again.
How you kept offering the cup even while shaking.
Thank you for letting this one breathe out into the world.
Thank you Kim for your keen sense of travelling with and following the thread so deftly. I am moved by these words.
“the moment you notice that you are not experiencing any kind of ‘time’, time lands right there on top of you and you lose the flow, the presence. Divinely paradoxical huh?” Indeed, I practice fielding that moment of return, becoming as intimately aware of it as breath. It can be gently rolled away, sending it back, and returning us to presence. When you say it lands on top of you, I agree, it does! And that can be keenly felt in the body and so metabolised by it too. And now off to continue this guilty midnight pleasure…
Comments by installment. Love it. ✨💫
hahah, there’s more but they’ll wait till morning. It’s now 2am and time for dreams. 💕🌷
May they be sweet. ✨
Reading your piece felt like stepping into a dunnage warehouse at dawn: cool stone walls, silent as chapel, yet fragranced by decades of patient spirit-work. You have already pulled a bold dram of metaphor from the cask, but may I swirl one further nuance into the glass?
You speak beautifully of the Angel’s Share, the half that vanishes skyward, and of the richer half that “remains, stays more”. In the trade, cooperage folk also whisper about the Devil’s Cut: the whisky that never evaporates but sinks into the staves themselves, darkening oak from within. When a decommissioned barrel is broken open, that hidden portion is teased back out, sometimes becoming the smoky undertone of a future blend. I wonder if our grief has a similar afterlife. Part evaporates (angelic, vaporous, memorial), yet part seeps marrow-deep, tinting the very grain of us. We do not merely carry loss; loss carries us, diffused through every fibre, waiting to be coaxed into some later, unexpected sweetness.
Which leads to a possibility your essay gestures toward but does not quite name: the art of re-casking the self. Distillers often finish a mature whisky in an entirely different barrel,,Sauternes, rum, mizunara, preventing stagnation and inviting surprise. Could the next ceremonial act after “remaining” be “re-maturing”, situating the newly porous heart in unfamiliar cooperage, learning a language, courting absurdity, apprenticing to silliness, even falling bewilderingly in love with a moss-green idea? Re-casking does not erase the original character; it converses with it, layering pear atop peat.
Your daily rites (hand-ground coffee, Gaeilge blessings, funk dances among birch) already hint at this. Each practice is a stave from another forest, spliced into your barrel. They stretch grain, alter tannins, make space for notes no single wood could provide. Presence is the solvent; curiosity, the catalyst; time, the quiet heat that fuses flavour.
When I write that intimacy is “dangerously unarmed”, I forgot to mention that ageing spirit was literally flammable. A warehouse rick going up in flames is called a “whisky-fire” and firefighters will tell you it burns blue-gold. So yes, living with an “open and broken heart” means accepting that at any moment the soul might flambé, releasing both angel and devil in one blue gout of becoming. But what is left in the smouldering ash often nourishes the next forest of oaks.
May your future self, thirty seasons hence, tap the bung of today’s barrel and be startled by a glint of lyric amber neither of you could name in advance. Sláinte!
P.S. Thank you for the mention, Paul!
Astonishingly erudite response and even though I would not expect anyrhing less, this has elevated you to a whole other place in my pantheon of writing Gods and human beings. As a visitor to many a whisky vault in my time, your journey through the stave staining Devil's share and the re maturing metaphor light me up and speak a language I know in my bones. (For the record, a Port Cask is where all of my re maturing will occur).
It is soul incendiary liquid you pour here. I do believe I have been well and truly flambéd already madame!!
I am so deeply moved by this response this morning that there are tears. Delighted ones. You are without a doubt living into your nom de plume as one guided by the muse, not just as a writer but as a host and catalyst for others. That you would take time out to meet me here in my early stumblings and offer both praise and profound encouragement is truly humbling and so beautifully raw.
You have not just made my day but planted a seed of ash for a future forest. Incredible.
P.S. I really meant to ask you about using the quote from your essay and it all got lost in the frenzy of actually hitting publish. So, thank you for the remain seedling. xx
You can use quotes from my essays, Paul! My work is out there, anyone can quote me in their pieces. I’m honoured.
🙏
Always
This is all so uncannily close to what I have been experiencing during the last year or two that I'm finding it hard to take in as I still don't quite understand my own experience yet. I am going to come back to this when I'm less overwhelmed because it is valuable and beautiful and probably the most normal thing I've ever read, if we may revert to the original meaning of normal and not the masking we all pretend is real.
Go raibh maith agat. I am sorry to hear you have had such trying circumstances but I am happy that this ‘normal’ piece found a place in you. Take your time and be with the overwhelm. I look forward to your return and your thoughts when you can do that. Go well. Sine é.
Reading this in the middle of the night and right now you’re making me want to get up and make my morning coffee—loving soaking this read in. Back in a while.
🙏🙏🙏
The language of the land remains virgin oak butter stained ancestors in line push through DNA they like to play
Such a poetic response. Thank you 🙏
I enjoyed the read tremendously
I appreciate that deeply. Bless you 🙏
Have saved this to come back to more slowly 🖤
Thanks. It is a bit of an epic. 🤔
I’ve read through it, but I feel like I need to reread becoming there are ✨layers✨☺️
I appreciate your efforts. There are indeed layers. Thank you. 🙏